Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/220

 XII

VERMONT MAPLE SUGAR

Sap-Boiling Time in the Green Mountain State

At ten o'clock the sap began to tinkle all through the grove. In nearly eight hundred buckets it fell, drop by drop, and the sugar season had begun. It was late March, but from the snow to the sky the day had all the warmth and glow of June. The sun had been up since before six. By seven it was shining bright into the Southern Vermont valley which the Deerfield River has carved out of the everlasting hills that roll and rise till the cone of Haystack tips them, nearly four thousand feet above the sea level. Yet till ten o'clock the maples sulked.

More sap is boiled in this beautiful bowl-shaped valley of which Wilmington is the metropolis than in any other part of the State. Vermont makes four-fifths of the maple sugar that is made in New England, nearly half of what is made in the United